Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 812 - 814

Chapter 812: Chapter 814

The realization settled deep in his chest, a mixture of relief and unease. If something still lingered here, something that had once been part of the city’s past, then it was possible, just possible , that it held answers.

And right now, answers were the only thing keeping him moving.

Jude squared his shoulders and stepped back into the shifting streets.

Jude stepped out into the shifting streets, his senses heightened, his mind still reeling from the vision. The city was quieter now, but he knew better than to trust the silence. It was the kind that came before a storm, the kind that tricked you into thinking you were safe until it was too late. His body still hummed with residual energy from whatever force had shown him the past. It had not been a hallucination. It had been real, or at least as real as anything in this strange, fractured world. The city had been alive once, its people moving with purpose, their bodies flickering between form and something else entirely. But something had come, something had shattered that reality, and the remnants of it still clung to this place like an open wound that refused to heal.

He tightened his grip around the dagger at his side, its familiar weight grounding him. He had questions, too many of them, but no answers. The entity inside him had gone silent again, retreating into the depths of his consciousness like it always did when things became complicated. It was a parasite, a presence that had always been with him for as long as he could remember, yet it only spoke when it wanted to. Jude had learned to live with it, to push past the unnatural urges it sometimes forced upon him, but moments like these made him realize how little control he truly had over it.

He walked, his boots making little noise against the ever-shifting ground. The buildings around him pulsed in and out of reality, their shapes warping and twisting like they were being rewritten by an unseen hand. Some of them were familiar, remnants of the old world trying to reassert themselves, but others were completely alien, structures that seemed to belong to another time, another place. The city was trying to exist, trying to hold onto something stable, but it was failing.

Jude glanced up. The sky was as fractured as the streets below, its swirling expanse a mixture of dark voids and faint lights, as if the very fabric of reality had been torn apart and patched together again with pieces that didn’t quite fit. He could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, an oppressive force that made every breath feel heavier than the last.

Then, the air shifted.

It was subtle at first, a ripple in the atmosphere, but Jude felt it immediately. His instincts flared, his muscles tensing as his grip on the dagger tightened. He wasn’t alone.

He turned his head slowly, scanning the street ahead. Nothing. But that meant nothing in a place like this. Whatever was out there wasn’t bound by the same rules as him. It could be watching from the shadows, from the cracks in reality itself.

A whisper of movement to his left.

Jude reacted instantly, his body moving before his mind could catch up. He spun, raising his dagger just as a figure flickered into existence before him.

It was not human.

Not entirely.

The figure was tall, its form shifting between solid and translucent, as if it existed between two states of being. Its face was obscured, its features blurred and ever-changing, but its eyes, its eyes burned with an unnatural light, sharp and piercing.

Jude did not hesitate. He lunged, his dagger slicing through the air, but the figure moved too quickly, its body slipping away like mist before reforming a few steps away. It did not attack, not yet. It was watching him, studying him.

Jude narrowed his eyes. "You’re not like the others."

The figure tilted its head, a movement almost human but not quite. When it spoke, its voice was layered, as if multiple voices spoke at once, overlapping and blending in a way that made it impossible to tell if it was male or female.

"You are not supposed to be here."

Jude exhaled sharply. "Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot."

The figure took a step closer, its form flickering again. Jude did not move, keeping his stance firm. If it wanted to kill him, it would have done so already. This was something else. A test, maybe. A warning.

"You carry the fragment," the figure said. "It does not belong to you."

Jude felt a cold weight settle in his chest. The entity inside him stirred, but it did not speak. It never did when others spoke of it. He had heard those words before. The fragment. The thing inside him. He had never known what it truly was, only that it was part of him, something that had been there for as long as he could remember. It gave him strength, but it also took from him.

He met the figure’s glowing gaze. "Then whose does it belong to?"

The figure did not answer immediately. Instead, it raised a hand, fingers shifting like liquid before solidifying. "It seeks to return."

Jude’s jaw tightened. "To where?"

The figure did not respond with words. Instead, it gestured toward the horizon, toward the towering structure he had seen in the vision. It was there, in the distance, shrouded in the ever-changing skyline, its peak lost in the fractured sky.

The entity inside Jude reacted violently. A sharp pain shot through his skull, forcing him to stagger back. His vision blurred, his breath hitching as the weight of something unseen pressed against him. It was resisting, fighting against whatever force was pulling at it.

Jude clenched his teeth, forcing the pain down. He had felt this before, but never this strongly. He had always assumed the entity had no will of its own, that it was simply a force inside him. But this, this was something else.